Actaeon

Spider bus, spider bus, goes wherever a spider bus goes...

I would support moving ahead with a character based Geneforge RP hosted on Spidweb and moderated by Goldengirl.

I think this is my most recent mugshot style pic. It runs with my column... WHEN I HAVE ONE

I think I saw more movies last year than in any before it, due largely to my weekly gig at the local theatre. Still, when the Oscar nominees are announced, I suspect I won't have seen or heard of half of them. Hopefully the community can help me out by sharing their assessments of 2014 in film.

I will go ahead and rate the ones I saw, in hopes of generating some discussion.

Alternatively, perhaps the GM wouldn't intervene so much as be brought in when there's a complaint. That is, another player could appeal a move that seemed out of line (like running across an Ur-Drakon canister right off the bat). They wouldn't be obliged to make judgement calls on every post, but would be appointed the final arbiter in disputes.

Many happy returns!

All my attempts at "hey, you should try these games" have more or less failed. Some have played a couple, but to the best of my knowledge none have stuck around here. Likewise, no one who made Refuge accounts for my RPGs seems inclined to hang around chat.

Looking at this chart, my first desire isn't to try to pass Diki in sheer numbers, but to connect some of those lobes a bit better– sort of like you and Nalyd did. So... Grimm? Eph? Sarachim? Meetup?

I would be willing to take a cut in my quality of life if it would promote worldwide egalitarianism and deter our government from its aggressive foreign policy. I suspect, however, that I would be fairly unhappy living at the global economic average.

As for whether some sort of violent revolution would be justified to improve things, I think it's a moot point. The majority of people who are being really screwed over by the US aren't here and don't have the means to get here. We have a fairly content populous, and those protests that do take place seem to lack focus. The government's military machine is far too powerful for a revolutionary force to handle, even if most of the armed forces refused to take on their countrymen.

That's not to say we won't go the way of Rome. I just think it will take a perfect storm of internal discord, outside pressure, and likely an economic collapse. I don't think we're there yet. Perhaps we could even avert it by working within the system. Admittedly, the deck has been stacked against us, but we still owe it to ourselves to play the hand we have.

Thanks for your understanding. It looks like the best option is just to delay it a week. 15:00-18:00 MST on Nov 29.

I'm afraid I have to cancel the Nov 22 session. My uncle is unwell and I'm going to use the weekend to go visit him.

Here's a whenisgood for rescheduling.

It looks like 15:00 to 18:00 MST on November 22 will work for the widest range of people.

I'm glad we already got the assassin scenario out of the way.

​In our second session, the guard managed to foil an assassination attempt against a visiting dignitary from the nearby Cenzan Empire, a supposedly benevolent dictatorship with an immortal leader. War was presumably averted, and everyone (including those of you who didn't join) gets to level up besides.

So far I've only had one response on http://whenisgood.net/citywatch3.

When a few more people fill it out, I'll announce another session.

You're certainly not too late.

It's becoming somewhat challenging to make a character that doesn't tread on someone else's turf. Some class overlap isn't a big deal, but we all like to have our own roleplaying niche. As such, let's have folks add their characters to a list to serve as a guide.

Here's a whenisgood for the time after next. My goal is to mix up the timing so different people get to participate, so I'd prefer not to schedule too far in advance.

http://whenisgood.net/citywatch3

I need to refine my spare character and maybe create a couple more, but the first session was a decent success.

The guards encountered a couple of skeletons stealing bones from the cemetery, followed them back to a seaside cave and encountered a teenage necromancer who was apparently missed when her parents were rounded up a decade or so ago. She was captured and they may try to rehabilitate her by enrolling her in the guard.

The next session will require a group to protect an important visiting dignitary from a rumored assassination attempt. It's scheduled for 6 p.m. MDT on November 1. If that's late in your time zone, keep in mind you'll be getting an hour back in the morning. Let me know if you can participate.

http://vdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=21032

24 hours per phase, anonymous, standard map.

Password is "implants".

We're still putting their finishing touches on characters for tonight, but I thought I'd share a few examples in case others are still on the fence.

Harry Baynes is an urban ranger and long time member of the guard. He'll be made available as a spare.

Eberk Greenshield loves small animals despite his fearsome reputation as a fighter and long dwarven lineage.

Leah Amastriana does her best to spoil her father's reputation after he refused to accept his half elven progeny.

Boris Marlow sees morality in shades of gray and is adept at ending tavern fights by beating everyone up.

That covers for my characters and those folks without Spidweb accounts. Anyone else considering participating, tonight or eventually?

What you could try to do is find an online gaming group. They exist. They tend to be more unstable than in-person groups, a fair number try to get together but never start, and gaming online just isn't ever quite as good as around a table, in my opinion, but it works. And if you're somewhere without other gamers it might be your best point of entry into the hobby. Like, say, the regular AIMhack games that happen here. See if you can get into one when it starts.

Like, say, the stand alone Pathfinder mini-campaigns that launch Wednesday. Might be worth spectating.

—Alorael, who is somewhat surprised that there still aren't, as far as he knows, any games designed specifically for online play. It's a solid niche.

I've been working on mechanics for a system called ORPHEUS with exactly that in mind. It presents a good opportunity for the stats and calculations to take place behind the scenes, making everything more efficient and bringing roleplaying to the forefront. However, I lack the coding skills to make it happen or the funds to hire anyone.

I think computer RPGers have a hard time grokking the tabletop thing. It's live. You don't get a list of decisions; you decide what you want to do in real time with limitless possibilities and the DM and the other players have to respond to that. It's collaborative storytelling with mechanics to give the bad guys a fighting chance.

As Slarty says, a computer can't, and in my opinion shouldn't, fill that role. What your describing is basically a computer RPG without a graphic interface. You could try Thy Dungeonman, but I doubt that's what you're looking for.

Jibber jabber wolby gokness.

The first session will take place on October 15 from 19:30-22:00 MDT on Calref's roleplay channel.

It'll help me plan if you RSVP, but anyone with a finished character can participate. If you can't make that time, don't sweat it; there will be others. Spectators are welcome, but I might enlist you to play the barkeep or the villain of the week.

Thanks, Ex. For easy updating, perhaps the best approach is to post the basics here and link to a google doc. I think having to chance to see each others' background and story is more important than their stats, so whatever format you like (spreadsheet, list, etc) is fine.

Right now we have a dwarven cleric, dwarven fighter, elven archer, half elven rogue/swashbuckler, and a human brawler. I'm going to draw upgoing to draw up a basic cranky old cop for people to use if they want to join a session last minute, but there's still plenty of room for a Bard or a Paladin or some sort of outlandish multiclass. I think we have enough to justify setting a time for the first session. Folks can certainly join in as we go.

Let me clarify that when I said "the next big plague", I wasn't so much thinking about ebola. Flu scares me more, given how things went down in 1918. I'd like to believe that there's adequate funding and research, though. I get a shot every year and almost always fare better than the folks who don't. I suppose that's a different debate.

I suppose I added "bloody" to Caliphate because they don't strike me as interchangeable. Sure, they all took some bloodshed to establish, but art and science flourished in some (say, the Abbasid), and not so much in others.

I tend to agree with Slarty that the West's behavior was "asking for it" in a very different sense than sexual assault and domestic violence, but I'm not sure about the analogy, tweaked or otherwise.

Most of the folks who drew the national boundaries after World War II are probably dead by now. The people who pushed for war in Iraq and Afghanistan are, by and large, not still in office and not obliged to help clean up the mess. And the humanitarian workers and journalists who are being executed have very little to do with their respective country's foreign policy.

Morality and responsibility is a sticky mess even when you're only dealing with individuals. Scaling it up is darn near impossible, so my question was flawed from the start.

So high ups in the CDC have suggested that Ebola could become airborne, according to several reliable news sources and CNN. Aside from that terrifying possibility, Ebola has long been my standard fallback in conversations about really unpleasant ways to die, and it's gone from obscure to a household name.

Meanwhile, flu season is on the horizon and there are plenty of other virulent diseases waiting in the wings. Although I'm unnerved by ISIS (see other topic), I'm more worried about the next big plague or the one after that. I feel like there's never funding until crap has already hit the fan and science is always playing catch up. Does this stuff keep anyone else up at night?

I'm sure most of you follow the news. I usually try to ignore the media's terrorism fear mongering, but the so called Islamic State is making it difficult. If they'd been hired specifically to horrify people and unite the world against them, I'm not sure they could have done a better job.

What do people think? Did the West bring this on themselves by drawing arbitrary nation states and then meddling for decades? Are these atrocities par for the course and ISIS is just better at getting the word out? Is there any place for a bloody caliphate in the modern world? Will their enhanced funding or luck indoctrinating westerners make them dangerous outside of the Middle East?